1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a socket contact for an electrical connector and a fabricating method therefor and, more particularly, to the structure of a half pitch contact for electrical connector and method of making the same.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In the generally recognized conventional manufacturing method of electrical connector contacts, the centerline spacing of the adjacent contacts must be one pitch such that sufficient material is reserved for the extent of the contact onto the strip stock due to the requirement of the contact design, which results in the arrangement of the contact in strip form is of full pitch centerline spacing pattern, conversely the terminal receiving passages of the insulator housing are in half pitch centerline spacing pattern. Obviously, the pattern of full pitch centerline spacing between the adjacent contacts of the prior art requires additional material, stampings, assembly procedures, product assembly time, overall cost to produce a connector.
FIG. 1 depicts an exploded perspective view of an electrical connector of the prior art with the contact 1 and insulator housing 2, enabling a detailed explanation of the prior art. As shown in FIG. 1, the insulator housing 2 is comprised of terminal receiving passages 3 to receive contact 1, and the centerline spacing "a/2" of the adjacent passages is in half pitch pattern while the centerline spacing "a" of the adjacent contacts 1 are in a full pitch pattern. In accordance with the full pitch centerline spacing of the adjacent contacts of the prior art, it requires a two step procedure to insert contact sets into each row of terminal receiving passages 3 of insulator housing 2. If the contact sets were manufactured in a pattern of half-pitch centerline spacing corresponding to the spacing of the terminal receiving passages 3 of insulator housing 2, it is obvious that manufacturing costs can be significantly reduced.
In practice, there are some restrictions which must be circumvented in order to manufacture the contact set in a half-pitch centerline spacing pattern. Manufacturing of known contacts with full pitch centerline spacing has an advantage in that excess material is available between the adjacent contacts on the contact set from which to form each contact. In light of this advantage, more latitude is provided in the design of various contact shapes since there is an excess of material to work with. But the cost to produce such connectors will increase due to material scrappage, additional assembly procedures and plating. The half-pitch design will reduce manufacturing cost for the inverse of the reasons above. Due to limited available material, a designer of contacts faces significant restriction in designing a half-pitch contact with similar electrical connection characteristics when compared to the full pitch contact.
One of the objects of this invention is to reduce the cost of manufacturing socket contacts. Another object is to overcome the restraint in practice of using half-pitch manufacturing techniques. A still further object is to develop a new socket contact structure. Yet another object is to provide a manufacturing method for electrical connector contacts which is cost-effective and with near-perfect electrical contact characteristic.
To illustrate the above mentioned objective, characteristic, and effect, the succeeding figures are cited to contrast the disadvantages of the generally recognized contact structure of electrical connector and the associated manufacturing method of the contact structure and fabricating technique of this invention.
The invention possesses other objects and features of advantage, some of which, with the foregoing, will be apparent from the following description and the drawings. It is to be understood however that the invention is not limited to the embodiments illustrated and described since they may be embodied in various forms within the scope of the appended claims.